by Bruce, Leo
That afternoon he decided to use a letter of introduction he had obtained to a high-ranking police officer and went to the Comisaria. He found his man a business-like but friendly Belgian, to whom he explained his business in Tangier, emphasizing that he was working as an amateur on a crime which had happened in England, in other words that he was in no way interfering in Tangerine affairs. This explained, he said he would like to ask a favour—that a fingerprint expert should accompany him to Larkin’s house and obtain a few prints of the late inhabitant. The policeman, after explaining good-humouredly how irregular it was, agreed. It was arranged that the finger-print man should call for Carolus tomorrow at eleven in the morning when, presumably, he would have got rid of Rupert Priggley.
He soon found that this was going to be harder than he thought. Priggley came to dinner that night in high spirits with two pieces of news. The fact that he threw these at Carolus with the most blase unconcern did not mean that he was not inwardly thrilled by them.
“The beach was pretty good today,” he began.
“Yes?”
“Met a little piece from Milan. Quite a reasonable number.”
“You did?”
“You know, proportionate, if nothing else.”
“Proportionate ?”
Rupert made expressive curves in the air.
“Oh, I see. You mean well-proportioned.”
“Don’t be carping. I mean she’s a reasonable bit of nonsense for the time we’re here. You won’t have to worry yourself about your pupil. You’ll know exactly where I am and what I’m doing.”
“I should hate even to imagine that. But in any case I’ve got something to tell you presently which I’m afraid will change all that. An end to frolics. You have work to do. But that can wait till after dinner. What else have you done besides meet the young girl from Milan?”
“Don’t talk as though she was something in a limerick. I’ve told you she’ll do for the rest of our stay here. What else? I’ve found out something for you.”
“Indeed? Perhaps you know who killed Gregory Willick?”
“No. But I’ve found someone who’ll help you to find out.”
“Who’s this?”
“Character called Eric Luck. Keeps a bar here.”
“How is he going to help?”
“You are rather obtuse sometimes, sir. You surely don’t think I would be recommending you this if I hadn’t good reason? Eric is a Character.”
“Frankly I’m rather sick of Characters. They’re usually frantic bores playing up to some idiotic role that has been thrust on them.”
“Eric’s the real thing. He’s been ‘in’ four times, including once on Dartmoor and once in Italy. He preferred Italy. The food was better, so was the organization. He comes from a family so drearily respectable that he took to crime chiefly to annoy them.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“He skipped his bail on a larceny charge in England and he’s resting. No visiting journalist fails to write him up. Sometimes they make him an ex-gangster dying of consumption and starvation in the Moorish quarter, sometimes they make him an ex-gangster leading a life of luxury in Tangier with a large American car, a yacht in the harbour and a harem of women at his beck and call. Sometimes they make him an ex-gangster who is the boss of the waterfront mob, a hard-bitten smuggler. One way or another he gets a bigger Press than a film star.”
“But what use is that to me?”
“There’s nothing about this town he doesn’t know. He’s been here over five years and he can tell you the lot. The lot. You’ve only got to drop in at his bar.”
When they had finished dinner, Carolus called Rupert rather mysteriously aside and told him gravely if ambiguously that he had received a telegram from England.
“I’m afraid you’ve got to go back at once,” he said, “and get down to Barton Abbess as quickly as you can. I’ll join you in a couple of days when I’ve finished here.”
“Oh, look here, sir, what about my Italian number? She …”
“This is pretty urgent. I want you to keep the whole lot under observation during the next few days. Particularly Gusset, Ridge, Socker and Packinlay. There’s a good bit more about the past to find out, too. They didn’t tell me everything. Stay at the Barton Bridge and see if you can make Mrs Gunn admit that she knew about Willick’s usual afternoon walk.”
“When do you want me to go?”
“I’ve booked you a seat on the plane leaving tomorrow morning. I’ve hired a car to drive us to the airport. I’m sorry you’re missing this, but you must see it’s urgent.”
“There are moments, sir, when you and your cases are little short of a bore. But I suppose I’ll have to go. You might run down to the beach and see that Italian number, though. Tell her I’m coming back or something. Get her address in Milan—I might run out next holidays.”
“I’ll see what I can do. You’re not missing much here, I assure you. We’re down to the dullest technicalities. Tomorrow I’ve got a finger-print expert coming here at eleven and I’m going to take him up to Larkin’s place. That sort of thing. I’ll be with you as quickly as I can.”
Rupert went up to pack and sleep, and Carolus decided to go to the bar the boy had mentioned. There were several questions he wanted to ask about both Willick and Larkin, and Rupert’s ‘real thing’, who had done three years on Dartmoor, would be as good a person as any to question. Besides, Carolus reflected, while his knowledge of crime was wide and increasing, he knew very little about criminals as individuals. He had shown himself able to unravel the most curiously knotted threads of evidence and to solve the problems created by crime, but he had no idea what professional thieves, warehouse-breakers, bank robbers were like. Here was an opportunity, apparently, of meeting a man who had belonged to at least one of those professions.
He liked Eric Luck at once. The man had an open, rather young face, the pale eyes of Norway, from which his ancestors had come, and a good profile. His shirt was open to show a chest ornamented with a tattooed representation of a girl’s head, and one of the three elderly Englishwomen who sat round the bar had just been putting lipstick on the tattooed lips.
“Did you ever see,” Eric enquired rhetorically of Carolus when he had served his drink—“did you ever see such a frightful lot of old phlugs as these?”
This was said well within the hearing of the three, who smiled fondly.
“Talk about the witches in Macbeth. You’d have to go to the Carpathians on Walpurgis Night to find anything like them. They come in here and upset the poor little Spanish faggot who lives with me. She’s gone off now, poor little cow, all because of these fearful old bags.”
“You been here long?” asked Carolus.
“Six years, except for one I did in an Italian nick for smuggling.”
“You never want to go back to England?”
“What, and do four years’ PD? Thank you very much, I’m quite comfortable where I am. What about you?”
‘I’m only here for a few days. There’s some information you can let me have. Could we go somewhere to talk?”
“Just wait till my little faggot comes back. She’s gone to eat. I can leave the bar to her and come with you then. What’s your line? Press?”
“No.”
“Not the-law, are you?”
“No. I’m making a private investigation of the deaths of Gregory Willick and Wilbury Larkin.”
“I thought you weren’t the law. I can smell a copper a mile away. Had one in here yesterday. Character called Maltby. I knew all about him before he opened his mouth. Come out here to question a poor old fruit in some sex case. Why can’t they mind their own business and leave the poor sods alone? Anyway, I jumped on this bastard before he got a chance to speak. ‘You’re the-who got my friend Lew White, aren’t you? Got him a five-stretch by lying about that peter he was supposed to have done. Well, don’t come here asking questions,’ I said, ‘because I’ll bloody soon mess you up for life, you greas
y copper.’ Went off without a word, he did. If they could get me out of here by extradition they —— would. But they can’t, the silly ——, not while I stay here and earn a living quiet and respectable.”
“How did you start on this lively career of yours?”
“Did my old man for a thousand nicker when I was sixteen,” said Eric Luck without hesitation. “But I don’t seem to bother with anything here. I’d sooner just keep my little bar and make a living. Ah, here’s Anita.”
A tiny figure, a Spanish girl so delicately made that she looked as if by a strong wind she might be blown away, came in and joined Eric Luck behind the bar.
“Yo sale un momento with the señor. Tu cuida the bar.”
Anita appeared to understand this curious jumble, and Eric come out to the street with Carolus and led him to another bar where they could talk uninterrupted.
“First of all, d’you know a man called Michaelis?” Carolus asked.
“Big Mike. Yes, I know him. What about him?”
“He says he’s going to kill me.”
Eric Luck did not smile.
“I don’t much like that, not from big Mike. Any other of the so-called bad boys here you can discount. Lot of rubbish, most of them, who wouldn’t have the guts for a decent tickle if they got the chance. Milk-bottle bandits. But big Mike is different. He’s done his bird in a French nick. He wants money just now, too. I’d be very, very careful if that’s what he said.”
“I’ve got nearly all I want here, anyway. Do you know Lance Willick and did you know Larkin?”
“Both of them, in a way. Lance comes in here now and again. He likes a couple of drinks. Larkin never went anywhere, but I knew him by sight.”
“Tell me what you know of them.”
“I quite like Lance. He’s not a bloke you get to know much, but he seems a very decent chap. The other one had the reputation of being a nasty —— but people will say anything.”
“Known them long?”
“Lance was here before I came. Larkin arrived soon after I did. I remember him coming because I was working on a ship called the Teresa then and someone came on board one night and told me about this Englishman with the loud voice who had gone to live in the medina.”
“He spoke Arabic, I believe?”
“Yes. I’ve seen him standing talking to Moors in their own lingo. He spoke German, too.”
“Willick says that there was a suggestion that Larkin was mixed up in some racket here.”
“Shouldn’t be surprised.”
“What could it have been?”
“One of several. The commonest is the old gag about arms. If you can convince the right Moors that you can lay hands on a shipment of arms for the Algerians they’ll hand over quite a nice bit of dropsy in advance.”
“Then if you deliver?”
“You’re liable to be done by the French. Or just quietly have your throat cut by a rabid French sympathizer. There are plenty of those.”
“And if you don’t deliver?”
“Then the Moors will have you for certain. It’s not a game to play round with. Most English people who have touched it have been out of the country dam’ quick afterwards, I can tell you.”
“What else could he have been in?”
“Might have had a little money invested in one of the contraband cargoes. There’s still a few leave here. But I don’t see how that could have got him murdered.”
“You think he was murdered ? The accepted theory is that he committed suicide after murdering Gregory Willick.”
“Suicide my foot! A man doesn’t throw himself into the sea until he knows he’s had it. Larkin didn’t. He was on his way to have a go with the law. Time enough for suicide when they’ve nicked him.”
“How friendly were those two, Willick and Larkin?”
“It’s impossible to say because Larkin never moved from his house. He’d go down to the market in the morning and get his supplies, then never put his head out of the door again. God knows what he did in that little shut-in Arab house. So any time Lance wanted to see him he had to go there. I understand he went about twice a week.”
“Thanks. Now throw your mind back to Larkin’s first appearance five years ago. Was Lance here at the time?”
“Yes. He’d just come back from Cadiz, where he had been staying for a couple of months. I know because a pal of mine went over there and ran into him. He never discussed his movements otherwise, and I don’t suppose we should have known where he had been. Then almost as soon as he was back we all got crowd work in a film company. Lance with the rest of us. It was while this was going on that Larkin turned up. I have an idea Lance found his house for him.”
“Have you seen Lance Willick lately?”
“Yes. I went to his birthday party, as a matter of fact.”
“When would that have been?”
Eric considered.
“It was a Wednesday, I know.”
“Before or after his uncle was murdered?”
“Couple of days before. That’s right.”
“Know anything else about either of them?”
“If anything occurs to me I’ll let you know. Meanwhile you be careful of Mike Michaelis. I’ll try to find out who’s hiring him. I daresay you could bid higher. But meanwhile take care of yourself.”
When he got back to the hotel he went to Priggley’s room and knew by the smell that the youth was smoking a keef cigarette, the local form of marihuana.
“Just as well you’re leaving tomorrow,” he said, taking it from him and throwing it away. “Got any more of those things?”
“No. Merely an experiment. How did you get on?”
“Well. Have you packed?”
“Yes. Willick came to look for you, by the way. He wants you to phone him tomorrow. He stayed chatting for quite a time.”
“I’ll phone him. I’ve arranged for you to be called in good time. Now for heaven’s sake behave yourself at Barton Abbess and get some information for me.”
“I got some for you here, didn’t I? Did Luck tell you about the passports?”
“No. What’s that?”
“Local racket. You can get a passport of any nationality you like in Tangier. It’s a fact. Can’t tell it from the real thing. Not too expensive, either.”
“How much?”
“Depends on what country. Between ten and twenty quid. You could have two or three if you wanted. All with your own photograph properly stamped. Is that information any good to you?”
“It might be. Good luck in Barton Abbess.”
16
THE FINGER-PRINT man was a Spaniard, almost as fat and wheezy as Mrs Gunn and slower of movement. He spoke good English and said with a smile that he had specialized in this branch of police work because it did not need agility. Carolus set out with him for Larkin’s house, but grew a little impatient with his waddle and tried to hurry him by going ahead. This, as it transpired, saved his life.
They were walking up the passage-way which ran from the narrow medina street to the door of Larkin’s house. There was not in any case room for them to walk two abreast, and the finger-print man was eight or nine yards behind. Suddenly in a voice which in that place sounded enormously loud, urgent and imperative, he shouted:
“Stop!”
Carolus wheeled round, and as he did so there was a shattering crash in the passage and he was almost blinded with dust and powdered mortar. A large piece of masonry had fallen to the ground on which he would have stood if he had not obeyed the fat man’s warning command.
As the air cleared a little he looked up, but there was no sign of anyone on the roof high above him. A crowd was gathering and he dragged the Spaniard away.
“Let the uniformed police deal with this,” he said. “We’ll get into the house out of this crowd. Someone will certainly tell the police when they arrive where we are.”
“Do you think it was deliberate?”
“No,” lied Carolus.
There was n
o point in giving details of Michaelis’s threat. It would mean having police protection, which would make it quite impossible for him to gather the few remaining bits of information he required. His best hope of escape lay in acting fast and getting away before the next attempt on him was made. This one had evidently been planned with some care and it seemed reasonable to hope that he would have a few hours at least before the next. Besides, if Michaelis was, as Eric Luck seemed to think, that old-fashioned character a ‘hired assassin’, he was not going to risk his own liberty while doing his job. He would strike again, but not wildly or indiscriminately.
“No,” he repeated. “I’m sure it wasn’t. Why should anyone want to kill me?”
They reached the house and entered, this time locking the door. Carolus made a quick search in case anyone was concealed there, but without result.
The finger-print man, whose name, he told Carolus, was Gomez, at once got to work while Carolus went to the bathroom to wash and brush as much as possible of the dust from his clothes.
After an hour’s work, making tests in every room in the house and in what seemed to Carolus unlikely places, Gomez announced that he could do no more.
“You should have the prints of at least three people,” Carolus told him. “Those of Mr Willick, the dead man’s friend who has been coming here to look after the place, my own and of course Larkin’s.”
“I have prints of only two.”
“Have another look, there’s a good chap. There must be one more.”
But no. Another half-hour revealed nothing.
“Tell you what,” said Carolus. “Take the prints on that bottle.” He indicated the bottle which Lance Willick had handled yesterday.
Gomez did this and said that they were the same as one of those he had been finding.
“Damn,” said Carolus. “They’re Willick’s, and I suppose the other set are mine.”
After taking Carolus’s prints Gomez said this was so.
“It means that we’re up against the same thing as the CID was when they examined Larkin’s cabin on the Saragossa. He must have taken the most extraordinary precautions.”